Tag: Syria
Shifting sands
Uncertainty is breaking out all over the Greater Middle East.
With Crown Prince Nayef’s death in Saudi Arabia, the House of Saud will soon have to look past its octogenarian leadership to the next generation, with all the uncertainties that implies. Will the next generation be as attached to religious and social Wahhabi conservatism as the current one? Will it open an era of serious reform?
The suspension of the UN monitoring effort in Syria presages an increase in violent conflict with a highly uncertain outcome. Russia seems determined to keep Bashar al Assad in power, though its Foreign Minister denies it. Iran will certainly exert itself in that direction. I doubt the armed rebellion can beat the Syrian security forces any time soon, but we could see a lengthy insurgency fed by Saudi and Qatari arms shipments through Turkey.
The only real certainty in Egypt is that the military is trying to hold on to power. Whether it can and what the consequences will be is highly uncertain, as are the results of today’s presidential election. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has arrogated to itself legislative power, which means it now has to deal with Egypt’s economy and social problems along security and law and order. I don’t know any military establishments equal to that task, but the risk of new parliamentary elections may be greater than the SCAF wants to run. It could end up forced to rule Egypt, likely badly, for some time to come.
Iraq‘s Prime Minister Maliki has faced down a parliamentary rebellion but Al Qaeda has renewed its murderous attacks against the country’s Shia. If they succeed in reigniting Iraq’s sectarian warfare, the promise of a relatively democratic society that produces a lot of oil will evaporate, leaving a bitter residue.
Iran‘s Supreme Leader Khamenei has concentrated power as rarely before in the Islamic republic’s history, but American and Israeli threats of military attack against it nuclear program make prediction even a year out difficult.
After ten years of rule by Hamid Karzai, even Afghanistan faces the uncertainty of an election (to be held no one knows when in 2013 or 2014) in which he will not be running and an end to the NATO combat role shortly thereafter.
I needn’t mention next month’s elections in Libya or the aging leadership in Algeria, where military success in repressing Al Qaeda in the Maghreb seems to have pushed the militants into the Sahel, where they are destabilizing several other countries.
A region that enjoyed decades of stability–some would say stagnation, much of it autocratically imposed–now registers high volatility. Of course volatility can move in either direction: there are possible positive developments as well as negative ones. Tunisia has pushed the envelope in the positive direction. Yemen seems to be making progress against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and affiliates, though some think the government offensive and U.S. drone attacks are creating more extremists than they are killing. Morocco and Jordan have attempted some modest reforms that seem unlikely to suffice, but they may stave off open rebellion.
It is not easy to deal with uncertainty. Most experts would recommend triage and prioritization. Triage happens naturally. There are only a few Middle East problems that will make it to the President’s desk: Iran and Egypt most frequently, Afghanistan because of the American troops, and we can hope Syria when Obama meets with Putin this week at the G-20 in Moscow.
Prioritization of issues is harder. Even those who recommend it muddle exactly what they mean. Colleagues at the Carnegie Endowment recommend in a recent overview of the situation in the Middle East:
international actors should focus on a few, very specific issues for special emphasis, such as international human rights standards, the maintenance of existing treaty relationships, and the principle of peaceful settlement of international disputes.
But then they go on to recommend economic cooperation aimed at job creation, a non sequitur virtually guaranteed to disappoint expectations given limited U.S. resources and a track record of failure. Not to mention the difficulty of meeting human rights standards, since these require equal gender treatment not readily available in the workplace in many of the countries in question.
Shifting sands will make navigation in the Middle East difficult for a long time to come. I recommend to all my international affairs students that they learn Arabic, or another of the regional languages (Farsi most of all). Even if American oil production continues to reduce already low U.S. dependence on the Middle East, the global oil market and the extremist movements the region has spawned will ensure we remain engaged there for a long time to come, triage and prioritization notwithstanding.
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The road to Damascus still runs through Moscow
Michelle Dunne and Dimitri Simes got it wrong in yesterday’s discussion on the PBS Newshour of Russia’s role in Syria. They failed to understand the main reason the Obama Administration hesitates to buck Moscow and offered a precedent–the 1999 Kosovo intervention–that can’t be mechanically applied in today’s conditions.
If only Syria were at stake and the Russians were tacitly on board, it would be foolish, as Simes suggested, for the Americans to hesitate to act without UN Security Council (UNSC) approval. They acted without approval in Kosovo without any serious backlash from Russia, which in 1999 was in no position to offer much resistance.
But that is not the current situation. Iran is also on the chess board. If the United States attacks Syria without Moscow’s concurrence, it will lose Russian participation in the P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran. Your top national security priority for the moment is stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but you would put that goal at risk for the sake of Syria? Whether you believe stopping Iran can be done by diplomatic means or you think that military action will be required, you want to keep your powder dry and the Russians on side as much as possible.
Russia to boot is not the basket case it was in 1999, when it winked and nodded at NATO’s attack on Serbia, which after several months ended Belgrade’s repression and the expulsion of the Albanians from Kosovo. Simes conveniently forgot that Kosovo briefly threatened real problems between the United States and Russia, when Moscow seized the Pristina airport before NATO forces arrived there. But Russia was too weak and too broke to do anything more than putter around the runways. Moscow today is far better equipped with armed forces, hard cash and diplomatic support to respond than it was in 1999.
The key to solving the Syria problem is convincing Moscow that it risks losing everything when the Assad regime comes down. Diplomatic persuasion, not military action, is what is needed. At some point, Russia will realize that protecting its port access in the Mediterranean and its arms sales to Syria requires support to the successor regime. If Moscow fails to jump ship in time, the Russians will go down with it.
Moscow sounded a bit desperate yesterday underlining that its arms sales to Bashar al Assad violate no UN resolution or international law. True enough. What they violate is common sense and human decency. No one should be surprised that this is difficult for Vladimir Putin to understand. He is after all having his own problems with demonstrators. But even he by now understands that helicopter gunships are not the right way to deal with dissent.
When President Obama sees President Putin at the G-20 meeting in Mexico next week, Syria should be high on the agenda. The road to Damascus still runs through Moscow.
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What does civil war meme?
Yesterday UN peacekeeping under secretary general Herve Ladsous suggested that Syria is indeed in a civil war:
Yes, I think we can say that. Clearly what is happening is that the government of Syria lost some large chunks of territory, several cities to the opposition, and wants to retake control.
The Syrian government denies it, insisting that its operations are aimed at suppressing terrorists.
What is the significance of the “civil war” meme? The conflict in Syria appears to meet the formal definition of civil war:
a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies
There may be some doubt as to how “organized” the Free Syria Army really is, but it seems, as Ladsous suggested, to be organized enough to control at least some territory. The Syria conflict certainly meets the threshold of 1000 casualties the academics require to label a conflict “war.”
The Syrian government prefers the counter-terrorism meme because it puts the conflict in a context that justifies vigorous state action. President Obama abandoned the “war on terror” metaphor long ago, but it continues to fight extremism with all the means at its disposal. Why shouldn’t Bashar al Assad do likewise?
If the conflict in Syria is a civil war, it does not follow that international intervention is appropriate. The United Nations will generally avoid engagement in such situations until the “warring parties” offer their consent. Consent in Syria so far is certainly nominal: the government allows the UN observers in and permits them to move around a bit, but it has not implemented the six-point Annan plan. The Free Syria Army has renounced the ceasefire that never really took effect.
During the Bosnian conflict, the label “civil war” was used mainly by those who opposed international intervention. While intervention in civil wars by neighbors, super powers and other interested parties has often occurred, in the American political lexicon “civil war” has usually been used to justify a wait and see attitude. If they are fighting among themselves, why should we get involved? It’s dangerous and potentially counterproductive if we prolong a conflict that might just burn itself out.
The meme that works in favor of intervention in the U.S. is a liberation meme, provided the government of the country in which the conflict occurs is not a friendly one. The Kosovo Liberation Army was an example, as was the NATO-led intervention in favor of the Libyan National Transitional Council. Not for nothing was the war in Iraq termed Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The Free Syria Army would like to be seen as part of such a liberation meme. So far, that has not gotten it direct American assistance. But yesterday’s revelation that Russia is providing attack helicopters to the Syrian army will likely open the spigot of clandestine transfers by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to the Free Syria Army a bit wider.
That won’t necessarily bring an end to a war that already threatens to destabilize Lebanon and in due course other neighbors. International intervention can lengthen and spread wars, whether they be termed anti-terrorist, civil or liberation.
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Credit the observers
The UN Supervision Mission in Syria has started posting its own Youtube videos (apologies if this is old news–it has just come to my attention):
The caption reads:
In Homs where increased and intensified fighting is taking place, smoke drift into the sky from buildings and houses hit by shelling. Next the observers traveled to Talbiseh and al-Rastan, north of Homs city. The roads were empty and all shops, garages, health centers were closed. The bridge on the highway between Talbiseh and al-Rastan appeared shelled.
A Syrian opposition flag – with three stars – draped from the bridge as the smoke and fire continued to burn. UN military observers on patrol to these towns noticed helicopters firing. There was fresh blood on corridors and outside some of the houses.The UN patrol team spoke with both side – Syrian army soldiers and oppositions free Syrian army – to try and ascertain the extent of this increased heavy weapons and attacks.Copyright UNSMIS 2012
This will not stop the Syrian government from committing atrocities, and it doesn’t even clearly asign responsibility. But it certainly improves the visibility of what is going on and generates both internal and external pressure against the regime. Unless you think the opposition is flying those helicopters and using artillery.
Does anyone doubt that the international observers, restricted and abused though they may be, are serving a useful purpose? I salute their courage, and their use of Youtube.
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Observe the observers observing
I won’t even try to link to the multitudes who have declared the Annan plan for Syria a failure and the UN observers useless. It is easy to prove the first proposition: Bashar al Assad’s regime has not even withdrawn its heavy weapons, never mind fulfilled the five other points of the Annan plan.
But that does not make the UN observers useless. To the contrary, what would we know about the massacre at Mazraat al-Qubeir if the UN observers had not gone in? Even a visit two days later, after a thorough cleanup by the regime, was sufficient to conclude that something dreadful had happened. It is vitally important that the UN observers continue their efforts and get the word out on what they find quickly and widely. This is what makes current events in Syria so dramatically different from the massacre Bashar al Assad’s father committed twenty years ago in Hama, which remains even today less than fully documented. It is still unknown how many thousands, or maybe tens of thousands, were killed.
Ground truth concerning what is going on in Syria is not only important for the international community but also for Syrians. Last weekend’s “general” strikes (more like “souk closures”) in Damascus and Aleppo were reactions to the al-Houla massacre, also disclosed because of the post facto presence of the UN observers. Symbolic bazaari resistance undermines an important pillar of the regime–heretofore it was feeling little pressure from the merchant class to stop the crackdown.
The lot of the observers is not a happy one: they are being shot at, blocked at checkpoints, threatened and likely worse. But they are going about their work with determination and, it seems from afar, considerable skill and courage. Will this end the parade of horrors the Syrian regime is committing? Not likely. Bashar al Assad has driven himself and his regime into a cul-de-sac. His only hope of remaining in power is to escalate the violence further, in the hope of restoring the fear that is vital to the survival of autocracy.
The observers are however important. They are revealing the facts of what is happening. They are witnessing what otherwise might go unreported. They are helping to keep up international pressure on the Assad regime. They are inducing Syrians who previously supported the regime to reexamine their position. They are embarrassing the Russians and Iranians, whose support for Bashar al Assad seems to be weakening.
None of this makes a resolution of the conflict in Syria imminent. It could go on for a long time. What we’ve got now is an insurgency that falls more or less in the civil war category. Such conflicts are rarely settled quickly. Only if Bashar al Assad can be persuaded to step aside, or if someone gets lucky and steps him aside, will it be possible to start the post-Assad political process that is the real purpose of the Annan plan.
Anne-Marie Slaughter argues against regime change as the international community objective. Instead, she proposes that the international community should, in accordance with the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, create safe areas in Syria, where civilians will be protected by military means from the regime’s security forces. This in my view is wrong: it would leave Bashar al Assad in place, ruling over and abusing a large portion of the population and likely causing partition of Syria, an outcome inimical to peace and stability throughout the region.
Bashar al Assad is the problem. Removing him is the solution. Diplomatic means are likely to be far more effective in achieving that objective than military ones. But that is not the purpose of the UN observers, who are there to observe. They are doing a good job under difficult circumstances. Let’s applaud their courage and determination.
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Implementation is the answer
Kofi Annan complains:
Some say that the plan may be dead. Is the problem the plan or is the problem implementation? If it’s implementation, how do we get action on that? And if it is the plan, what other options do we have?
He is right. Those are the essential questions.
The other options are few and risky. Michael Singh warmed them over yesterday. Rob Satloff warmed them over today.
Rob’s version has the virtue of illustrating in graphic terms what is at stake for the United States if the Syrian civil war gets worse. The chem/bio weapons that preoccupy American security agencies would not be my primary concern: those are more perilous to the people who possess them than to anyone else. But Syria can export instability to Turkey (via Kurds), Lebanon (Alawites and Hizbollah against Sunnis), Jordan, Lebanon and Israel (by expelling Palestinians). This would ignite ethnic and sectarian war throughout the Eastern Med and attract jihadist responses.
When he gets to answering Annan’s second question, Rob comes up short with a call for renewed American resolve:
Such resolve could include a mix of cyberwarfare, to interfere with Syrian government communications efforts; unmanned drones, to target key installations and weapons depots; air power, to establish and defend safe zones; and a manned element based in neighboring states, to execute a train and equip mission to support rebel forces. At the same time, it is essential that the United States, teamed with Arab, Turkish and other allies, inject urgency and energy into the task of upgrading the cohesion and message of the Syrian political opposition, so that there is a clear answer to the important question of what comes in the wake of Assad’s demise.
Some of this is already in the works, overtly or covertly. The drone and air power part would require a major military operation. None of it is likely to accelerate Bashar al Assad’s departure.
So what can be done to get implementation? Two things:
1. a credible military threat;
2. demonstrated commitment to peaceful means, working closely with Moscow and even Tehran while sustaining the civil opposition.
A credible military threat–with credibility demonstrated for example by a cruise missile attack on the presidential palace–would require the United States to buck the Russians and Chinese, who show no sign of weakening their opposition to intervention. This President Obama will not do, because it would wreck prospects for a negotiated outcome to the Iran nuclear problem. Moscow and Beijing would withdraw from the P5+1 negotiations. If you think stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons by diplomatic means is your top national security priority, you are not going to put it at risk in Syria.
The second option, demonstrated commitment to peaceful means, is the more important one. Kofi Annan is proposing that a “contact group” that includes Iran and Russia be formed to help with implementation of his six-point plan. That strikes me as a good idea. Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton, who are quoted in the press as having rejected it, should reconsider. The devil is of course in the details, but contact groups of this sort have often proven vital to peace implementation. The Administration will want to ensure a decent balance in the group, but bringing Iran and Russia into the tent is better than having them do you know what from the outside.
Just as important is signaling long-term support for the opposition. Here I mean the civil resistance to Bashar al Assad, which organizes dozens of demonstrations every day in Syria and has far greater potential to bring him down than the military effort, which scares people off the streets and helps to consolidate Bashar’s control over the armed forces. These are the courageous people we need to be helping (they are in Kafarsouseh, Damascus, yesterday):
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